If and when I have a thought, and have ten minutes in the office, I might write mildly diverting thoughts here: about new media in real life, about the web, about the future. But mostly, I think, I'll just wiffle about nothing.

Now, partial as I am to a nice quality link (except for the lovage and apricot ones from Waitrose, which frankly taste like they've been stuffed with marshmallows and sick) - that's just a wee bit scary. I wonder if they're reading a cookie of related searches I've done? Or using the google toolbar to follow my movements?

Now I'm sounding like a cookie consipiracy theorist.

But I want to know, because it's getting spooky. Next thing there'll be a link to 'how to hide your cat from your landlord'.

Monday, October 27, 2003

PRIL: "One morning in 1951 German housewives were roused by a commercial transmitted over the ether by radio: loud duck quacking sounded from the loudspeakers, followed by a soft female voice which sang, 'Pril softens water, Pril makes water wetter, Pril, Pril, Pril?' "

Ian Atkins is excersising - a good thing, as his diet (yes, the atkins diet) is the kind of thing you assume those americans that have to be cut out of their own homes must eat to attain that level of terrifying obesity. Really, as someone who can happily stick away a litre of icecream and three portions of chinese at one sitting, it is humbling.

He's complaining that there are no fat women in the gym. Well... he thinks he has it bad as a boy. If you're a fat girl you have the disdain of the blokes, the faintly-tinged-with-pity disdain of the girls with the norwegian smiles, AND the problem of trying to use a running machine without your tits boucing so much you get motion sick.

Friday, October 24, 2003

I rather like the World of Wonder Manifesto. They make good telly, and it comes out of their belief in trash. I particularly like the fact they believe that the avant garde and the underground aren't the obvious, but the crap.

I think I may find this depressing. Because it means it's a clique. Which means little originality and a lot of self aggrandising bollocks. Oh, and because I'm fucking propagating it.

I can remember the feeling of desperately wanting to be part of a movement, at the centre of something fresh and radical, in the underground, a trendsetter, when I was churning out 'art'. Now I look with extreme suspicion on these little coalescences of talent - I think they're cloistered and exclusive. It's not to say they haven't got talent - they have it in spades. It's more that the talent gets... herded. There aren't any outsiders, people cutting against the prevailing wind. It's like some weird cultural flashmobbing.

New Favourite Thing.

I'm beginning to think I should revisit all that stuff about 'there is no avant garde' again. The turnaround pace is so fast these days, that new 'yoof' movements are actually being picked up by the media before they have a chance to do anything of any interest. Nag Nag Nag is just New York Club Brats all over again. I don't like this. Flash Mobs - so last wednesday. Friendster - over before anyone found it. I wonder if anyone has registered mayfly.com ?

It's a similar feeling of ennui to the one I had clubbing last weekend - lots of people blindly having fun, most of them ten years younger than me, and me in the corner thinking 'don't you see that it's ALWAYS been like this? That you're no different?'. Maybe it was reinforced by all the 19 year old boys who found me surprisingly good fun to talk to, and were a bit shocked to find out I like Autechre and Aphex twin.

Perhaps I just think in the long now. I've got an image in my head of fashions changing superfast in a shop window, the sun not so much rising and setting as flickering...

Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I'm just too cynical.

Perhaps my old idea of the only valid form of resistance being apparent total conformity is the way. But then you end up like the Chap crew, making tits of yourself on the Today programme becasue your ability to articulate your posturing is... poor.

It's a great response to a gathering too - whilst giving your full attention to the speaker, you're occupying the bit of your brain htat gets distracted and starts thinking about, say, garden peas. I know that in my notebooks, I often 'place' information from talks by the doodles surrounding them - years later I can flick through a book going 'it was on the right hand side, and there's a piss poor drawing of the lecturer in the top right corner....' Having said that, that relies on me finding the time to flick through the books say, once every six months to refresh my memory.

It's becoming a theme with me - I miss always carrying a sketchbook. I miss drawing. I miss creating. But I don't have the space in my life to keep it up. You can only create when you have the emotional resources to do it, and mine are stretched thin just coping with my life.

When am I going to get to the place where I feel competent and in control?

Lists are a wonderfully lazy form of thinking. Their very nature means you can think of a very loose theme, jot down the first n things that come in to your head, and release a perfectly formed bulleted gagpile ino the world.

Which is read by a small, but dedicated, following of three boys.

Now, boys are lovely. I get on better with boys than I do with ladies. Ladies, lets face it, are unpredictable, overemotional, and understand makeup - three accusations that are rarely levelled at me. I enjoy their company, we make the same kind of jokes, we have the same oddly categorised way of thinking (see earlier posts for details of my freakish boy brain.).

But - and here's the rub (as it were) - I don't, as a general rule, have sex with boys. At least, not in any meaningful, let's get brunch, maybe a movie kind of way. It's not that I dislike having sex with boys. It can be quite fun, provided they're presentable, and don't
1. have the annoying habit of pushing on the top of your head rather than asking nicely
or
2. reek like the bottom of an ocelots' sockdrawer.

I just choose not to, because I don't really fancy them, so it's ultimately a hollow, unrewarding, and mostly unenjoyable experience. (And often chafes.)

So... and the point is coming (as it were) - there's an interesting double bind between liking and hanging out with boys, and not wanting to get anywhere near their sexual doings on any terms other than your own.

Because, correct me if I'm wrong, most boys seem to think about fucking you at some point.

(Lee, pass go, collect £200.)

Where am I going with this? Well, I don't think I've ever sufficiently explained to anyone other than another straight-acting lesbian the weird discomfort that happens when you get the first tiniest inkling that a boy might have been thinking about you... like that. Because it just doesn't occur to you that given random boy z might ever think about you as desirable, any vague intimation that a boy might be vicariously latching on to your sexual antics is like being hit in the face with a kipper.

You instantly smell something fishy.

I'm sorry I posted a throwaway comment about blow jobs in an endearlingly lazy list. It was done for comic effect, m'lud. I know I overshare all kinds of details about my sexual life with all of you, and that I'm singlehandedly destroying the mystique of the construct that is woman, etc...

But really, it was just a blowjob. In a dark nightclub. At 4am. With a complete stranger. And my lady wife. For a giggle. I was egged on.

So how come all of my dear readers emailed me almost instantly demanding more details? Hmm?

There was a point here. Oh yes. Lists - they get you in trouble. Actually, filing anything into neat little categories is gonna get you in trouble, lets face it.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

I miss my houseboys much more than I thought I would.
I think about my houseboys every day on the bus.
I miss my cats.
I didn't think I'd get so upset when I saw one of my cats drive off into the sunset.
I am strangely unaffected by having an unpleasant 'break up' with my best friend.
I am so in love it is terrible.
I really don't like giving boys head.
Morning cuddles are worth an extra 200 pounds a month.
Packed Lunches rock.
Untraceable Smells can ruin your life.
Cocktails are good, but stop you doing anything constructive.
Dogpoo is often concealed by fallen leaves.
Lesbians make really good removal (wy) men.

About Me

Portly noo-meejah product manager with a liking for gin and ladies. Oh, and a boy. Just the one.
Fond of eating,
Prone to being too serious,
Optimistic (mostly),
Solipsistic,
Nowhere near as interesting as you might think,
A wobbly speller (sorry).